Posts Tagged ‘Discoveries’

Gene therapy, a promising clinical approach to treat patients with a range of inherited diseases, often uses vectors derived from lentiviruses to insert a correcting genetic sequence into the patient’s stem cell chromosomes. While this type of treatment can provide long-term cures for inherited diseases, vectors from these viruses can also inadvertently activate cancer-causing genes because of the way they stitch or “integrate” the therapeutic DNA with human DNA. Avoiding these unwanted integrations while retaining the correcting gene has … Read More

Gene therapy holds the promise of curing many diseases—but this promise has been thwarted by the steep technical challenge of delivering new genes into cells. One potential solution to this challenge is to use adeno-associated virus (AAV), which is an ideal vector because it does not cause disease in humans. Despite AAV’s many advantages, however, currently available AAV vectors can be used only in limited cases because engineering the viral capsid, or shell, has been … Read More

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and University of Pennsylvania have improved sleep disturbances in mice with traumatic brain injuries by giving them branched chain amino acids – something all humans produce from foods in their normal diets. This discovery could lead to help for thousands of people who have long-term and debilitating sleep and wakefulness issues after they suffer concussions. “If further research confirms what this study suggests, we could … Read More

Misfolded protein molecules, caused by gene mutation, are capable of maintaining their function but are misrouted within the cell and can’t work normally, thus causing disease. An OHSU team has discovered a way to use small molecules that enter cells, fix the misfolded proteins and allow the proteins to move to the correct place and function normally again. The team, led by P. Michael Conn, Ph.D., formerly a senior scientist in reproductive sciences at neurosciences … Read More

The New York Times December 2 “Science” section featured the work of Lynn Sakai, Ph.D., Senior Investigator at the Portland Shriners Research Center and Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, OHSU. Dr. Sakai and her colleagues have been studying the use of fibrillin-1 levels–the protein associated with Marfan syndrome–as a blood test for aortic ruptures. Read the Times feature here.

A publication by Pei-Chun Chen, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and her mentor, Show-Ling Shyng, Ph.D., has been selected as a “Paper of the Week” by the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The paper, “Leptin Regulates KATP Channel Trafficking in Pancreatic β-cells by a Signaling Mechanism Involving AMPK and PKA,” was highlighted online and in the Nov. 22 print version of the journal. Additionally, a figure from the paper was selected for … Read More

New research from the lab of Eric Gouaux, Ph.D., senior scientist at OHSU’s Vollum Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, reveals how neurotransmitters in the brain interact with antidepressants. These findings were published in the November 7 edition of Nature. The first paper, “X-ray structure of dopamine transporter elucidates antidepressant mechanism,” uses structural biology techniques to improve our understanding of the dopamine transporter. These new insights about the structure of the dopamine transporter may help … Read More

From a young age, Lulu Cambronne, Ph.D., has always been interested in trying new things. For example, as a young musician she enjoyed composing works that explored hybrids of classical and modern sounds. Today, as a scientist at OHSU’s Vollum Institute, Dr. Cambronne is still harnessing her creativity and using it to develop solutions to difficult scientific problems. As a postdoc in Dr. Richard Goodman’s lab, one of Dr. Cambronne’s inspired ideas became tangible while … Read More

Stem cells are thought to hold promise for treating degenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis and heart disease. But finding a source of embryonic stem cells, which can be reprogrammed into any other cell type, has been an obstacle to progress in developing such treatments. Now OHSU’s Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Ph.D, and his team have developed a process that transforms human skin cells into embryonic stem cells. This successful reprogramming utilizes somatic nuclear transfer. The Mitalipov lab is the … Read More

“Liver stem cell therapy for humans is coming,” said Markus Grompe, M.D., director of the Papé Family Pediatric Research Institute and co-author of a new Nature paper that describes how a team of researchers was able to successfully grow mouse liver stem cells in culture for the first time. The cells were then transplanted into a mouse model for liver disease, where they had a modest therapeutic effect. In the study, researchers used a modified version … Read More